Wednesday, April 12, 2017

…Then came word of the death early this morning of
Masha Leon. She was for decades the gossip columnist of the Jewish Forward...

Little did any of them know that when Masha was a
girl, she and her mother caused to be sent one of the most consequential
messages in the history of the Jews...It’s a reminder that one just never knows what might be the reward of
an act of kindness. Masha herself didn’t learn the consequences until decades
after it happened.

Masha was born in Warsaw, and survived, she once
wrote, by “a series of miracles.” She lived through the bombing of Warsaw, the
German occupation, and getting trapped in a noman’s land between hostile Nazis
and Russians. What strength Masha’s pluck must have given her mother, Zelda.
For a while they survived on potatoes, which is why Masha’s freelance resume
included, alongside such titles as McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal, the Idaho
Potato Journal.

Eventually they got to Vilna, where, in August 1940, Russian
secret police threw Masha’s father, an anticommunist Polish journalist named
Matvey Bernstein, into Lukishki prison. One day Masha and her mother were
waiting outside hoping to get to him some warm clothing. They thought he’d
need it for the exile to Siberia that they assumed lay ahead. A young
newlywed woman next to them whispered that she was sending into the prison a
message to her husband on a piece of paper stuffed into a bar of soap.

The newlywed was desperate to get word to her husband
that she was going to make aliyah to Eretz Israel. Masha’s mother whispered a
warning that the authorities might cut open the soap, discover the note, and
exact punishment. “My mother,” Masha would later relate, “suggested that
instead she should embroider a coded message on a handkerchief—no one would
suspect anything, since embroidery was commonplace.”

At the time Masha and her mother had no idea who the
young woman was. Masha’s father was indeed sent to Siberia, while she and her
mother were among the lucky recipients of visas from the righteous Japanese
consul at Kovno, Chiune Sughihara. That enabled their escape to Canada, and, in
1945, arrival in America, where Masha would raise her own family. And,
eventually, discover the mystery of the young newlywed outside Lukishki prison.

Masha was reading Menachem Begin’s 1977 memoir, “White
Nights,” when she came to the chapter about his imprisonment at Lukishki. Begin
related that he shared a cell with a prisoner named Bernstein. One day, Begin
received from his wife several handkerchiefs. They were embroidered with the
same word, “Ola,” which, at first, seemed an odd misspelling of, “Ala,” Aliza’s
Polish nickname. The two prisoners puzzled over it. It was Bernstein who
suddenly exclaimed that “Ola” in Hebrew can be transliterated as “aliyah.” She
was telling him that she was heading to Palestine. “It was all clear to me
now,” Begin wrote.

Begin told of how he’d considered divorcing his wife, so
that Aliza would be free to remarry if he were to die in prison or Siberia. But
after deciphering the coded handkerchief, he didn’t. My own theory is that the
knowledge that Aliza would be in Israel was one of the things that sustained
Begin in his epic journey from the Gulag to Palestine, where he led the revolt
against the British and set the stage for independence.

Masha eventually told
the story to Aliza herself and, when he was in New York, to the Begins’ son
Benny. “Were it not for your father,” Benny told Masha, “I might never have
been born!” Nor might have been the state of Israel itself — save, one can
imagine, for the fact that one day outside Lukishki Prison, Zelda Bernstein was
tugged along to glory by her plucky young daughter named Masha.

…Then came word of the death early this morning of
Masha Leon. She was for decades the gossip columnist of the Jewish Forward...

Little did any of them know that when Masha was a
girl, she and her mother caused to be sent one of the most consequential
messages in the history of the Jews...It’s a reminder that one just never knows what might be the reward of
an act of kindness. Masha herself didn’t learn the consequences until decades
after it happened.

Masha was born in Warsaw, and survived, she once
wrote, by “a series of miracles.” She lived through the bombing of Warsaw, the
German occupation, and getting trapped in a noman’s land between hostile Nazis
and Russians. What strength Masha’s pluck must have given her mother, Zelda.
For a while they survived on potatoes, which is why Masha’s freelance resume
included, alongside such titles as McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal, the Idaho
Potato Journal.

Eventually they got to Vilna, where, in August 1940, Russian
secret police threw Masha’s father, an anticommunist Polish journalist named
Matvey Bernstein, into Lukishki prison. One day Masha and her mother were
waiting outside hoping to get to him some warm clothing. They thought he’d
need it for the exile to Siberia that they assumed lay ahead. A young
newlywed woman next to them whispered that she was sending into the prison a
message to her husband on a piece of paper stuffed into a bar of soap.

The newlywed was desperate to get word to her husband
that she was going to make aliyah to Eretz Israel. Masha’s mother whispered a
warning that the authorities might cut open the soap, discover the note, and
exact punishment. “My mother,” Masha would later relate, “suggested that
instead she should embroider a coded message on a handkerchief—no one would
suspect anything, since embroidery was commonplace.”

At the time Masha and her mother had no idea who the
young woman was. Masha’s father was indeed sent to Siberia, while she and her
mother were among the lucky recipients of visas from the righteous Japanese
consul at Kovno, Chiune Sughihara. That enabled their escape to Canada, and, in
1945, arrival in America, where Masha would raise her own family. And,
eventually, discover the mystery of the young newlywed outside Lukishki prison.

Masha was reading Menachem Begin’s 1977 memoir, “White
Nights,” when she came to the chapter about his imprisonment at Lukishki. Begin
related that he shared a cell with a prisoner named Bernstein. One day, Begin
received from his wife several handkerchiefs. They were embroidered with the
same word, “Ola,” which, at first, seemed an odd misspelling of, “Ala,” Aliza’s
Polish nickname. The two prisoners puzzled over it. It was Bernstein who
suddenly exclaimed that “Ola” in Hebrew can be transliterated as “aliyah.” She
was telling him that she was heading to Palestine. “It was all clear to me
now,” Begin wrote.

Begin told of how he’d considered divorcing his wife, so
that Aliza would be free to remarry if he were to die in prison or Siberia. But
after deciphering the coded handkerchief, he didn’t. My own theory is that the
knowledge that Aliza would be in Israel was one of the things that sustained
Begin in his epic journey from the Gulag to Palestine, where he led the revolt
against the British and set the stage for independence.

Masha eventually told
the story to Aliza herself and, when he was in New York, to the Begins’ son
Benny. “Were it not for your father,” Benny told Masha, “I might never have
been born!” Nor might have been the state of Israel itself — save, one can
imagine, for the fact that one day outside Lukishki Prison, Zelda Bernstein was
tugged along to glory by her plucky young daughter named Masha.

About Me

American born, my wife and I moved to Israel in 1970. We have lived at Shiloh together with our family since 1981. I was in the Betar youth movement in the US and UK. I have worked as a political aide to Members of Knesset and a Minister during 1981-1994, lectured at the Academy for National Studies 1977-1994, was director of Israel's Media Watch 1995-2000 and currently, I work at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. I was a guest media columnist on media affairs for The Jerusalem Post, op-ed contributor to various journals and for six years had a weekly media show on Arutz 7 radio. I serve as an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish Communities in Judea & Samaria.